


Whump on La Sirena

by Aini_NuFire



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Gen, Hurt Cristóbal Rios, Hurt/Comfort, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aini_NuFire/pseuds/Aini_NuFire
Summary: A few whumptober prompts I wrote for Rios.
Comments: 41
Kudos: 36
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. No. 10 Trail of Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Whumptober early! Since I'm doing all 31 prompts for The Musketeers but also a few for Picard and Merlin, I figured why not start posting some now. Enjoy!
> 
> Also thanks to 29pieces for beta reading and tessseagull for the Spanish!

No 10. Trail of Blood

Enoch moved his white bishop five spaces across the chess board, taking Ean's rook. Grinning, he leaned back in the navigation seat and folded his arms across his chest, mighty pleased with himself.

Ean, leaning against the middle console, canted his head in appreciation of the move and crossed his arms, one hand cupping his chin as he considered the board. Behind him, Emmet was dozing in the other bridge operations chair.

It was a rather quiet night on _La Sirena_ , what with the captain off ship. His absence gave the Emergency holograms a chance to remain on and enjoy some recreation and mutual companionship without Captain Rios constantly barking at them to get lost.

"Alright, where is he?" a prim voice sounded angrily from below.

Ean huffed while Enoch sighed heavily. Well, their subroutines were based off of their captain, so there was bound to be some commonalities.

Mister Hospitality stormed up the steps onto the bridge and marched right over to Emmet where he grabbed the ETH's legs and shoved them off the console they were propped up on. Emmet let out a startled snort and blinked in confusion.

"What?" he asked disinterestedly.

"Don't play dumb with me," Hospitality sniped, hugging his leather-bound PADD against his chest. "What did you do, slaughter a tribble?"

Emmet squinted at him. " _¿Qué coño haces?_ "

Hospitality scowled. "Do you know how hard I work to keep this ship pristine?"

Enoch thought about pointing out that the captain did that, but a subtle head shake from Ean kept him quiet. The EEH moved one of his few remaining pawns. Enoch tried to ignore the spat between the steward and Emmet—it wasn't exactly uncommon—but the next thing out of the Hospitality Hologram's mouth caught his attention.

"You think it's funny, replicating a bunch of blood and just tossing it across the floor? Well, I'm telling you, _you_ can clean it up." He gave Emmet's legs a kick.

Enoch straightened and turned his full attention to Hospitality. "There's blood on the floor?"

" _Yes_."

Emmet furrowed his brow. " _No fui yo_."

Enoch leaped out of his seat. He had a bad feeling about this. Emmet could be a slob but he didn't usually intentionally make a mess for Mister Hospitality to find. "Where?"

Hospitality rolled his eyes impatiently and gestured toward the mess. Enoch turned and made his way downstairs, the others following. The dark red splotches were difficult to see in the low lighting with the dark gray metals, but Enoch spotted the trail.

"Increase lights by forty percent," he said.

The ambient lights brightened considerably, illuminating the blood drops spaced across the floor in a linear path. Enoch looked up and down both directions it went, trying to gauge which way was coming and going.

"Looks like it passed through the cargo hatch," Ean said, already examining the far end. "But where's it heading?"

Enoch walked along the path in the opposite direction until it rounded the corner and stopped at the closed doors of the lift. "Computer," he began hesitantly, "locate Captain Rios."

"Captain Rios is in his quarters."

Alright, then.

Enoch turned to look back at the others. "I think we're going ta need Emil."

They all shared grim looks of understanding at that. Enoch pivoted on his heel and strode toward the medical bay. The moment the doors swished open, he was bombarded with a high decibel of Klingon opera music. Emil was at his desk, flicking through data streams.

"Does that have to be so loud?" Enoch shouted over the belting Klingon.

Emil shut off the music and swiveled in his chair. "It's my subtle version of 'Do not disturb.'"

"Well, we have a medical emergency."

Emil sighed loudly and got to his feet. "What's the captain done now?"

"We're not sure. You should come take a look."

Enoch led the EMH back out and pointed to the blood trail on the floor. "He's in his quarters."

"No one saw him come in?" Emil asked.

Everyone shook their heads. The captain apparently didn't want them to know about this, which did not bode well.

"Alright." Emil walked over to a control panel and began tapping out commands. He muttered something under his breath. "Well, he's not dead yet."

With that, he turned and strode toward the stairs, taking them two at a time as he hurried his way up to the upper deck where the crew quarters were located. Enoch and the others quickly went after him, even Emmet, who may have had a blasé attitude about everything else but cared as much about their captain as the rest of them did.

They marched straight to Captain Rios's door and Emil punched the key entry. It beeped a negative response. Emil scowled and typed in the EMH's override command. The door swished open, revealing a dark interior.

"Lights," Emil snapped.

The flood of illumination would have stolen Enoch's breath if holograms needed to breathe. Rios was half sprawled on his bed, one arm draped across his stomach, and his black shirt had a large dark stain on the side.

"You sure you got those readings right?" Ean asked worriedly.

Emil moved to the side of the bed. "Med kit," he barked. The requested item materialized on the mattress next to the unconscious captain, and Emil immediately began to run a medical tricorder over him.

"Look at this mess," Mister Hospitality tutted, gazing at the bloodstained floor and bedsheets.

Emmet rolled his eyes.

Enoch picked up the captain's discarded jacket and carefully folded it over the back of the chair. "Will he be all right?"

"This time," Emil huffed. He put the tricorder away and picked up a hypospray next, which he loaded with something and swiftly injected into Captain Rios's neck. Then he grabbed another medical device and pulled up the captain's shirt to get at the wound.

Ean leaned over to get a look and let out a low whistle. "Someone gutted him."

"I'm sure he was asking for it," Emil said brusquely.

"Hey," Emmet interjected in warning.

Enoch shook his head sadly. Unfortunately, they all knew the truth behind their captain's self-destructive tendencies.

"Emmet, would you please secure a ship's lockdown?" Emil requested. "We don't know whether anyone might come looking to finish the job."

The ETH gave a gruff nod and left.

"Enoch, perhaps you can set a course in case we have to leave suddenly?"

He nodded and turned to leave.

Mister Hospitality started muttering to himself as he began picking at the bloody bedsheets. Ean grabbed his arm and steered him out of the room with a firm, "Later."

They all went off to handle their various responsibilities as _La Sirena's_ Emergency Holograms, leaving Emil to patch up their wayward captain on his own.

But after Enoch finished plotting out a course in the ship's computer, he meandered back toward the crew quarters.

"No one asked you," a very familiar, very irritable, and blessedly conscious voice drifted out.

"If you truly wanted to let yourself die, you wouldn't have come back here," Emil snipped.

There was no response to that.

Enoch waited a beat before coming around the corner and into the room. He flashed Captain Rios a beaming smile. "Captain, good ta see ya awake."

Rios huffed and turned his head away. He was reclining in bed properly now, sitting up against the headboard and pillows. His shirt had been removed but the wound was gone. Emil must have held off bringing the captain around to consciousness until after he'd completed the dermal regeneration.

Enoch gave the EMH an encouraging smile, knowing he wasn't going to get any thanks from his patient. Emil acknowledged it with a clipped nod, threw one last glance at Rios, and then left. Enoch went to the bookshelf and picked out a book, then sat in one of the upholstered chairs.

"What are you doing?" Rios growled.

"I thought I might read to ya for a bit," he said cheerfully. "Unless you'd rather Mister Hospitality come back and start cleaning up the blood. I'm sure he's having a coronary imagining the stains setting in."

Rios snorted but didn't make any further objection, so Enoch settled back in the chair and opened the book to where it was last marked and began to read. It wasn't a suicide watch, just his own clumsy attempt to show his beloved captain he wasn't alone, and that he'd be missed if he was gone.


	2. No 13. Chemical Pneumonia

No 13. Chemical Pneumonia

A photon torpedo slammed into _La Sirena_ 's hull, rocking the ship and sending multiple systems offline in a shower of sparks. Emmet flickered at the operations station before disappearing.

"Dammit!" Rios yelled.

"I got it," Soji said, quickly taking Emmet's place at the weapons station to fire back at the son-of-a-bitch Romulan bird-of-prey that'd come out of nowhere. The synth planet may have been under Federation protection, but any one of them caught out on a lone ship without backup was fair game, apparently.

Rios cursed as another shot skimmed past his ship. Their shields were down and another direct hit was going to end them.

Soji's hands flew across the controls with dexterous speed, firing back a burst of phaser fire. The bird-of-prey veered away, aborting another run at the freighter. Rios tried to turn his damaged ship to keep the enemy within firing range.

Then an alarm started blaring.

"There's a plasma leak in the aft engine," Raffi exclaimed from the other ops station. "It's venting into the ship!" She twisted in her chair to throw Rios an alarmed look. "The holo system is down."

"I can do it," Soji started.

"No," Rios snapped. "You keep shooting at that bastard." He'd have to handle it.

He surged from the captain's chair and gestured sharply at Seven to take his place. There weren't many he'd trust to fly his ship, but she was one of the best damn pilots he'd ever seen.

Rios sprinted from the bridge down the length of the ship to the engines in the rear, skidding to a stop as he reached the transporter pad and found the right side juncture rapidly filling up with gases. The rupture must have happened inside the power flow conduits between the engines and the nacelles.

He grabbed a tool kit from a nearby compartment, paused to pull his t-shirt collar up over his mouth and nose, and then plunged into the fumes. The chemicals stung at his eyes and made them water as he yanked the panel off the wall. More gases spewed out. He fought to see through the fog to where the leak was coming from. Finally spotting it, he bent down to retrieve the right tools to repair it. His shirt slipped down and he got a face full of toxic air. He pulled it back up and held it there, but as he reached in to repair the leak, he realized he needed two hands.

The ship juddered, either from another hit or the navigation controls failing, Rios didn't know. But if they did get hit, this plasma could ignite into a fireball. So he focused all his attention on fixing the leak and tried to trust the people on the bridge with everything else.

He cut off the power flow through that conduit, then quickly worked to seal up the rupture. Once that was done, he rerouted the power through another system in order to keep the engines functioning. Rios coughed into his sleeve, his throat itchy and irritated from inhaling the fumes. He gave the conduit one last look, then staggered back to the end of the corridor and the nearest control panel where he erected forcefields on either end of the adjoining passage and then vented the gases into space.

A fit of coughing bowed him over the control panel, his chest tightening uncomfortably. But the crisis wasn't over yet.

Struggling to get his breath back, Rios turned and slogged his way back to the bridge just in time to see Soji fire a direct hit at the bird-of-prey, ripping it to shreds. Both she and Raffi erupted with victorious shouts. Rios gripped the back of the captain's chair to brace himself and exchanged a nod with Seven. Smiling, she slid out of the seat to return command to him, but he didn't sit down.

"Is it over?" Agnes's voice called tremulously as she, Elnor, and Picard made their way up the stairs from the lower deck.

"That depends," Rios said hoarsely and cleared his throat as he looked to Raffi. "How much damage did that _pico_ do to my ship?"

She grimaced as she turned back to the controls. "Shields are down, engines are at sixty percent. Environmental controls are at seventy-two. On the bright side, that synth repair device can fix it all up in no time." She swiveled back around with a smile.

Rios huffed; yes, there was that.

His chest twinged and he subconsciously reached up to rub it. Another fit of deep, wracking coughs struck him, doubling him over with their ferocity. He tried to catch himself on the arm of his captain's chair, but the coughing ripped through his chest so painfully that he clutched at his sternum and fell to the floor. He couldn't _breathe_.

"Cris?" Agnes yelled.

Several people crowded around him and multiple hands were touching, gripping his shoulders, his head, trying to roll him onto his back.

His mouth was wide open, desperately trying to suck in oxygen. His lungs spasmed in response.

"Computer, activate EMH," Picard ordered.

"The holos are down," Raffi replied frantically.

"Then get them back!" he barked.

"Where's the synth device?" Seven asked sharply.

"I know where it is," Soji said, sprinting away.

Rios couldn't follow everything that was being said above him. He caught Agnes's terrified eyes before she was leaping to her feet and running off. He sucked in another shuddering breath, but he couldn't get his lungs to expand enough.

Raffi scooted in beside him, taking his hand in one of hers while the other reached up to brush his hair back from his face. "Breathe with me, baby, come on."

She inhaled deeply and slowly, her eyes urging Rios to follow her. He tried, he really did, but his lungs wouldn't cooperate. His chest felt like an anvil was sitting on top of it.

"Elnor, third storage compartment from the right," Picard said, "there should be an emergency breathing apparatus."

Of course Picard would know where it was; Rios did keep everything to Starfleet regulation.

The kid darted off to retrieve it and returned quickly with the item. Picard took it and efficiently fitted the oxygen mask over Rios's face. The burst of pure oxygen hit his airways with a puff of cold but did little to ease the spasming in his lungs.

Agnes came running back with a med kit in hand and dropped down on his other side again. She got a medical tricorder whirring over his chest. "Shit," she cursed and snatched up a hypospray next, which she pressed into the side of his neck.

The injection of medicine flooded his veins and eased some of the pressure in his lungs, allowing him to take in a ragged breath. It still wasn't enough.

"What's happening?" Picard demanded.

"Chemical aspiration." Agnes loaded another hypospray and pressed it to Rios's neck again. "We need the EMH!" she shouted over her shoulder.

"Almost got it!" Seven yelled back.

"Come on, Cris, stay with me," Raffi kept urging, squeezing his hand as tightly as she could. "What about the transporters?" she then yelled at the others.

"Initiating transport," Seven's voice returned.

A second later there was the swirl of the transporter lights and for a brief moment, the fire in Rios's lungs was gone. Until he rematerialized on the biobed in the medical bay, and then his body reacted to the suspended moment and everything seized with a barrage of harsh, guttural coughs. Raffi grabbed him by the shoulders to try to brace him.

"What is the nature of- good lord."

"He can't breathe!" Agnes cried. "His lungs are full of…" she trailed off and shoved the tricorder readings at Emil. His eyes widened and he immediately started blustering around, snapping orders at the computer and initiating systems.

Normally Rios hated the fuss the EMH made, but right now he'd endure it just to be able to breathe again. His lungs burned and his vision was growing more and more spotty. Alarms started blaring. Wasn't that how all this started?

There were more hyposprays and the holographic generator was activated just above him, sinking down to take over respiratory function. Rios finally passed out.

The next time he woke, the beeping was calm and sedate and the mask was gone. He kept very still and focused on his breath. His chest ached, but the influx of oxygen filled his lungs without impediment. Rios cautiously peeled his eyes open, squinting at the bright intensity of the med bay lights.

Agnes was sitting by his side and smiled tiredly at him. "Hey."

"Hey," he rasped.

"Try not to move just yet," she cautioned. "The chemicals are still being filtered out of your lung tissues."

Well that sounded…pleasant.

"How's my ship?" he asked.

"Better than you," Agnes replied with a wry quirk of her lips. "Soji, Seven, and Ean have been working on repairs."

Rios tensed. "No more Romulan warships?"

"No. Raffi thinks it was a rogue agent. Picard sent out a request for Starfleet to have a ship rendezvous with us and look into it."

Rios let the tension seep out. It seemed there wasn't anything for him to do. He wasn't sure he liked that.

Agnes's expression was tight like she was upset.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She exhaled heavily. "You nearly died."

Rios's brows pinched together. In the past, that wouldn't have bothered him so much. Now that he had someone who would be hurt if he was gone, he found himself more disturbed by the idea of her pain.

He shifted his hand to cover hers where it lay on the bed. "But I didn't."

Agnes nodded. "You saved the rest of us."

Rios let his eyes fall closed. He had done that. He'd protected his crew.

He was, as Picard once told him, Starfleet to the core.


	3. No 14 Heat Exhaustion

No 14. Heat Exhaustion

"Environmental controls offline," the computer's voice recited calmly.

"Yes, I know," Cris growled, slamming the control panel with his fist.

Of all the places to break down, it just had to be too close to a blazing sun. Shields were at fifteen percent, barely enough to keep out the intense radiation, not to mention the heat. Cris wiped the back of his arm across his forehead as sweat dripped onto the useless control panel.

"Ean!" he shouted.

"Ach, I'm dooin' what I can," the Emergency Engineering Hologram called back from the rear of the ship.

"Do it _faster_!"

Cris urgently tapped a few more controls, trying to reroute power to the environmental systems. Nothing was working.

A warm piece of metal pressed against the side of his neck, followed by a sharp hiss. Cris jerked away and scowled at the EMH.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Inoculation against radiation poisoning," Emil replied primly.

"If you want to be useful, pick up a damn wrench," Cris spat back.

The controls weren't working. He'd have to crawl into the ship's belly and get into the systems manually.

Jogging over to a storage compartment, Cris grabbed a diagnostic kit and then hurried downstairs to gain access to a Jeffries tube underneath the bridge. It was even hotter inside the cramped compartment, and sweat was streaming down Cris's face now. He almost thought he could hear it sizzling on the metal beneath his boots. It probably would have been better to send Ean down here; holos didn't care about temperatures. But he was working on getting the engines back online and if he succeeded with that first, they could just fly out of the sun's orbit at maximum impulse.

Cris yanked a panel off the wall and started fiddling with the components. Sweat continued running into his eyes and stinging, which made it difficult to see the delicate wires he was working with. He touched a piece of metal and hissed as it burned his fingers.

" _Por la mierda_ ," he cursed.

He tried to wipe the sweat from his eyes again but that only served to rub it in further. His chest felt tight breathing the sweltering air. If he didn't get these controls back online _now_ , he was going to cook.

"Come on, come on…"

Slick fingers slipped over the conduits and relays, but then he must have finally hit the right thing because it lit up with renewed power. The computer's voice said something, though Cris found he couldn't quite make it out. His vision was blurry and he was starting to feel dizzy.

He crawled out of the Jeffries tube and staggered into more open space. Was there air? He couldn't tell. Something whirred in his ears but he couldn't tell if it was the engines or some random buzzing in his head. Everything wobbled and he pitched sideways, crashing to the floor. The metal was still too warm. He tried to roll away from it but his limbs had suddenly turned to jelly. So he just lay there as the ceiling warped and swirled above him. It made his stomach lurch so he closed his eyes and passed out.

The cool hiss of a hypospray roused him. Cris groggily peeled his eyes open to blurry surroundings and an amorphous shape moving around.

"Feeling better?"

Cris slung an arm over his eyes and moaned. "What happened?" he asked hoarsely.

"Heat exhaustion," Emil replied. "Borderline heat stroke."

Cris didn't respond or move, just focused on the feel of cool air brushing his exposed skin. "I take it Ean fixed the engines and got us out of there?"

"He did. And you restored the environment controls, though Ean had to vent the excessive heat before the ship's equilibrium could be restored. Enoch has set a course for the nearest space station. Apparently there are some parts that are going to need to be replaced."

"Mm."

They were efficient, his squad of emergency holograms. Almost like a real…

Cris wrenched himself away from finishing that thought and hauled himself into sitting upright. The room spun as a result and he reached up to press a hand against his eyes.

"You might want to rethink that," Emil said.

Cris didn't dignify that with a response. He gave himself another minute, then carefully slid off the biobed and started making his way out of the infirmary.

"Oh, and do refrain from the alcohol for at least the next few hours," Emil called after him. "Unless you'd like me to treat you for dehydration again so soon."

Cris flipped him off and staggered out the door. There'd be liquor later; there always was. But right now he had a ship to inspect and repair.

Cris might not have been good at taking care of himself, but he more than made up for it looking after his _La Sirena_.


	4. No 27 Extreme Weather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is my last whumptober piece for this fandom.

No 27. Extreme Weather

Agnes ran her gaze along Cris's mermaid collection.

"Kind of incongruent," she commented. "The whimsical collection of mermaids next to the collection of books on the existential pain of living."

He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. "I suppose I'm an incongruent kind of guy."

Yes, he was, but in an enigmatic way Agnes found alluring. She turned in his embrace and stretched up on her toes to kiss him. Linked like that, they started to make their way toward the bed. But just as they were about to tumble onto it on their own power, the ship suddenly lurched violently, flinging them off their feet and onto the cushioned mattress.

"What was that?" Agnes exclaimed, her heart rate immediately kicking into overdrive with all kinds of horrible thoughts of the ship being under attack or having a warp core breach.

Cris scrambled off the bed. "We dropped out of warp."

Agnes could tell that wasn't the whole story because, for one thing, she knew dropping out of warp normally didn't feel like that, and for another, Cris went rushing out the door. The ship was still juddering and part of Agnes wanted to stay right where she was and hold onto something, but after being in a firefight with a bunch of Romulan warships, she didn't exactly want to go back to being a coward now. So she sucked in a shuddering breath and hurried after Cris.

She was a few steps behind him when they reached the bridge.

"What the hell happened?" Cris demanded.

"We passed into an ion storm," Enoch reported. "The disruptions to sub space pulled us out o' warp."

"Ion storm, is that bad?" Agnes asked as the ship lurched again and she threw her arms out to keep her balance.

"This one's a force five," the ENH replied.

"And that means what exactly?" she pressed.

"That you'd better hold on to something," Cris said as he stumbled into the captain's seat and pulled up the piloting controls.

Agnes staggered to one of the other seats in the back and gripped the arm rests with white knuckles as the ship was battered by the variant stress and pressure of the external forces. Alarms started blaring and part of Cris's holographic console shorted out.

"Dammit!" he cursed, his hand shaking on the joystick as he fought to control the ship.

Harried footsteps had Agnes turning her head as the others made their way onto the bridge.

"Report," Picard barked. He still hadn't quite tamped down that command urge.

"Ion storm," Agnes said so Cris and Enoch wouldn't have to be distracted with answering.

"Oh dear," Enoch started.

Agnes was about to ask him what the hell he meant by that when his holographic image spritzed. He glanced down at himself in alarm, then looked up, his wide-eyed expression frozen for a split moment before he winked out.

Cris swore again in Spanish and jerked the ship to the side, nearly flinging Agnes from her chair. She watched bands of magnetically charged whips lash through the space ahead of them, and then one struck out like lightning and hit _La Sirena_ head on. This time Agnes was thrown to the floor, and so was Cris. His head struck the corner of the platform and he rolled into the back of the ops chair where he came to a stop, unmoving.

Agnes's breath caught in her throat, and despite her terror, she crawled her way across the floor to reach him. Blood was pouring from a gash just below his hairline.

"Activate—"

"No!" Seven shouted, pulling her way into the captain's seat. "The ion storm will only destabilize the EHs. We have to wait until we've cleared this." She seized the piloting controls and took over wrestling _La Sirena_ through the storm.

Agnes looked helplessly down at Cris. He was still bleeding. She yanked off her t-shirt and wadded it up to press against his head as the ship continued to rock back and forth violently.

Soji managed to haul herself into the operations console and yelled that she was going to try to boost the shields.

"Can't we go to warp?" Raffi shouted.

"Storm's too powerful," Seven replied. "That's what knocked us out in the first place."

Another wave slammed into the ship again, throwing Agnes on top of Cris. She clung to him and squeezed her eyes shut, praying for it to be over soon.

And then with a burst of power to the engines that ignited a series of sparks in the back of the ship, they went careening past the edge of the ion storm and into clear space, flying end over end with the stars through the view window swirling together. Agnes had to look away before it gave her vertigo.

"Is it over?" she asked tremulously.

Seven straightened in her chair. "We're clear," she confirmed.

"Now can we activate the EMH?"

"Yeah," Raffi grunted. "I think that'd be a good idea."

Agnes looked behind her and saw Raffi with her arms wrapped around the railing above the lower deck, a welt blossoming on her forehead. Across from her, Elnor pushed himself up off the floor and clutched at his wrist.

Seven checked a few readings on the console and then nodded. "Activate EMH."

Emil flickered into view. "What is the nature of the- oh my. What happened?"

"Ion storm," Picard responded. "We have a few injuries."

"Cris is unconscious and bleeding," Agnes put in hurriedly, her heart palpitating with fear for Rios.

Emil turned and immediately came to her, calling for a holographic med kit to materialize on the floor next to him. He picked up a medical tricorder and began a scan. "Concussion, bruising. No inter-cranial bleeding though."

He set the tricorder down and grabbed a hypospray next, which he loaded with some type of medication and injected it into Cris's neck. Next he picked up the dermal regenerator and Agnes pulled her bloodstained shirt away so he could begin to mend the gash on Cris's head. When he was done, he put a gentle hand on Agnes's shoulder.

"Do keep him still if he wakes up."

Agnes nodded, and Emil hurried off to check the others.

Cris let out a low moan and started to loll his head. Agnes shot a hand out to cup his cheek and prevent him from moving too much. His eyelids fluttered and he squinted at her as though in pain.

"Agnes?"

"Yeah," she breathed, smiling with sheer relief. "Don't move yet. You hit your head."

Of course he didn't listen to her and tried to lift his head to look around. "The storm…"

"Seven got us out," Agnes assured him.

"Oh." He groaned again and raised a hand to clutch at his head.

Agnes knew concussions weren't automatically fixed with a hypospray and regenerator and they'd have to be careful for the next twenty-four hours.

"A lot of systems sustained damage," Soji reported. "But we still have impulse engines and we can put a little more distance between us and that storm."

"Good idea," Picard said.

Cris tried to sit up again, and Agnes pushed him back down.

"Stop that," she hissed.

"You heard her," Cris grunted. "Lots of repairs to make. Enoch's offline."

"Is he?" Emil interjected, making his way back over. "Well, that won't do. However, the ship will be in capable hands while her captain is on bed rest."

"Emil," Cris growled in warning.

"I'm sorry, Captain, but this is one area where you cannot push through with a stiff upper lip. The brain is still the most mysterious and remarkable organ in the human body, and there is no treatment to magic away the effects of injury. So please, for all our sakes, listen to my orders just once."

Agnes leaned close and lowered her voice. "For me?"

Cris met her eyes, and she swallowed hard at one pupil being slightly larger than the other. "Alright," he relented.

Emil beamed at his victory, though he quickly squashed his grin when Cris glowered his way. Agnes and the EMH helped him sit up, waiting an extra beat when it was clear the change in elevation made him dizzy. Then they helped him to his feet and started shuffling their way toward the crew quarters.

They paused as they passed Raffi and Elnor, Cris's brow furrowing.

"You two alright?"

Raffi waved a hand weakly. "I'm on orders to rest like you. Though I didn't bleed all over my girlfriend's shirt."

Cris frowned and looked at Agnes in confusion. She sighed, not wanting to explain that right now.

"I'll be all right," Elnor piped in. "The doctor said it was just a sprain."

Cris studied the kid for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Good." He turned his head searchingly until he found Seven. "Thanks for getting everyone through safely."

"I like to think of us as a tag team," she replied with a knowing glint.

Cris considered that for a moment, then inclined his head, which upset his already precarious balance and he swayed, but Agnes and Emil were quick to keep him upright.

"Alright, I'll see this patient to his quarters and then I'll be back for you two," Emil said.

Cris grumbled under his breath the entire slow, slogging journey, mostly directed at the poor EMH who never got any thanks for his work. Agnes gave him a grateful smile though.

They got Cris onto his bed and then Emil left.

"Back to our original destination," Cris mumbled.

Agnes snorted. "Yeah, but strenuous activity is definitely off the menu."

She roved her gaze around the room, then bent down to pick up a mermaid figurine that'd fallen off the shelf and broken into three pieces. It wasn't all that incongruent, this collection. They represented this ship, and by extension, Cris. Including the broken pieces.

Agnes set them on the desk with the intention of fixing them later. But for now, she turned and crawled onto the bed to settle next to Cris.

"I thought you said this was off the menu," he said tiredly, struggling to open his eyes.

"Shh," she replied, carding her fingers through his hair. "Let someone take care of you for once."


End file.
